Asphalt Dysphoria

The music of suburban despair

Elly Blue

An experience I’ll never forget is reading The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler on a train across the US when I was 19. The 1993 book, now a classic, is a systematic, point-by-point condemnation of the effects of cars and suburban sprawl on American culture and civic life. It’s nonfiction, but it reads like a grim dystopian science fiction novel.

As I read, I sat in the Empire Builder’s lounge car, looking up every few paragraphs to see the backyards, back roads, and back alleys of the Midwest roll past, gorgeous fields of flowers alternating with endless heaps of forsaken cars.

The combination of the view and the book made my suburban upbringing fall into place; my discontent wasn’t just my wild brain acting up. It was a condition materially built into the landscape. Other people saw and felt and lived it, too. It was depressing and heartening and uplifting all at once. That Amtrak ride set me on my life path. Learning to ride a bicycle a few months later sealed the deal.

This weekend, I started thinking about music made about being on that same path through and out of the asphalt bubble of suburbia. With the help of many brilliant Twitter comrades, I came up with this playlist to share with you.

Note that this playlist contains violent imagery and offensive language, along with loneliness, anomie, and social decay. It probably shouldn’t be blasted in your office or retail establishment without some edits. Also, it’s hardly complete; it only contains songs that I enjoy listening to. Feel free to make your own mixes and tell me about them!

Like Kunstler’s work, this music is about problems, not solutions. It’s about calling out the ugliness, not finding the beauty in the cracks. There’s a time, a place, and a lot of other songs for all of that. For now, I present to you: the music of Asphalt Dysphoria.